Google to allow Chrome developers to charge for extensions and themes

Google has announced that as of now, extension and theme developers using its Chrome browser will be able to charge users to buy their products to make it easier to publish.

A member of the browser’s web store team, Chary Chen, made the announcement in a blog post and they will be looking to expand upon the current ability for developers to charge for apps.

All future payments will be organised by the Management In-App Payments system, which will allow developers to create and manage all of their in-app products directly in the developer dashboard instead of having to embed or dynamically generate and serve a payment token for each sale.

Developers can enable or disable products, provide localised descriptions, and set prices for different regions, and Google will then manage the licensing.

In what would appear good news for both customers and developers, the new changes will allow for users to try a free trial for a limited amount of time before making a purchase.

This latest announcement is seen to be part of Google’s plan to create tighter controls over which apps, extensions and themes are published on the browser. Google announced last November that it will not accept any app, extension or theme that has not been approved by Google in a bid to clamp down on malicious extensions or any that might be promoting illegal activity.